Colorado wins “food safety center of excellence”

A worker at the state’s food-safety lab holds up a slide with a swab of cantaloupe.

Colorado’s food-safety investigation team made an impression nationwide last year as listeria-contaminated cantaloupes were killing Americans.
Now the CDC has named Colorado as one of five “food safety centers of excellence.” The state was selected through a competitve process to become part of the center, a joint effort among the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, the Colorado School of Public Health and Colorado State University.
The state receives $200,000 to advance work in food safety, said Dr. Chris Urbina, executive director and chief medical officer at the state health department.
The other states that won the designation are Minnesota, Oregon, Tennessee and Florida.
The award was created as part of the Food Safety Modernization Act, with a goal of creating partnerships between state health departments and universities to improve surveillance and investigation of foodborne illness outbreaks.
“Because of Colorado’s extremely rapid case reporting and lab work, we have repeatedly led multistate investigations,” Urbina said.
Foodborne illnesses costs the United States $152 billion per year, an average cost of $1,850 each time someone gets sick from food, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Electa Draper is the health writer for The Denver Post and has covered every news beat in a 22-year journalism career at three newspapers. She has a bachelor's degree in biology and a master's in journalism.